Göring. A Biography

(Michael S) #1
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day], I found, in the first place, that this attractive
building had once again been rebuilt to suit
Hermann’s by no means cheap taste.... He has had a
modern Wurlitzer organ built in so that he can have
his own talkies at his home and have an organist play
for the overture....

Then Hermann himself turned up. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I
have asked you to come here in order that I may show you the
gifts my people have given me.”


They filled two rooms, including a Lenbach portrait of
Bismarck from Hitler and a solid-silver schooner from the City
of Hamburg, which Emmy had often ogled on school trips to
the City Hall. Göring was unlikely to be troubled by the ethics of
it all. He was forty-two, and the treasure-houses of the Reich
were opening to him. The Reichsbank had given him the fa-
mous Breslau Castle dining service in Royal porcelain (Göring’s
office had the effrontery to ask later for two candelabra missing
from the inventory). The Reich Board of Guilds had furnished
an exquisite drawing room for the Görings. Czar Boris of Bul-
garia had given a medal to Hermann and a sapphire bracelet to
Emmy. Kings and emperors, ambassadors and ministers, the La-
bor Front and chambers of commerce  all had deemed it pru-
dent to bestow gifts on him.
In Germany his popularity was zooming. “Göring,”
reflected Louis Lochner, “is a type of fellow whom one cannot be
mad at. His vanity is so obvious and his love of pomp so naïve
that one simply laughs, and lets it go at that.” Göring had easily
won over the ambassadors who found the more radical Nazis
unpalatable: André François-Poncet, the papal nuncio, and
Phipps all found him a good conversationalist and approachable
in matters that went against the Nazi grain. The Polish ambassa-

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